Dark Arts
by forty-two dreams
Summary: Heidi knew precious little about Hogwarts but she did know this:   1 There used to be a class called "Defense Against the Dark Arts". 2 This class had just been replaced with a class called "Dark Arts".  3 They were about to become what they most feared.
1. The Risk

Heidi gripped her mother's hand tightly as they navigated the mid-morning traffic at King's Cross, afraid of what would happen if she got separated from her family. She didn't like this feeling; it didn't fit in her heart somehow. The past three years she had accompanied her older brother, Julian, to the school train, she'd been desperately wishing she could join him on his trip to the never-seen but often-dreamed Hogwarts. Now she wasn't so sure.

She couldn't imagine how Hazel was holding up, without even her family here to see her off. They'd said their goodbyes this morning, but of course Hazel's parents couldn't be here. Privately, Heidi thought it was even foolish of her own mother to come. Muggles were officially banned from passing through the barrier to platform nine and three-quarters, and from the looks of those badly-disguised security wizards prowling around the entrance, they weren't welcome within fifty feet.

"But I don't understand, Dad," she'd whined earlier in the summer. "Why are we safe but Hazel's family isn't?"

Her father had adopted his infinitely sad look and explained, "Well you see, dear, Hazel's parents are both muggles, and Hazel is a witch. Now, according to muggle biology this makes perfect sense; many recessive genes behave this way. However, some wizards are puzzled and angered by it."

Heidi had frowned. "Well, why doesn't someone just explain to them about genes?" Her father wrote books about magical creatures for a living and the Lee children had grown up with all manner of cross-bred mythical stock.

"They don't want muggles explaining things to them just now," her mother had said quietly, a hand dropping down to rest on her daughter's shoulder. "The wizards who have recently come to power are trying to separate wizards and muggles, and they don't like to be reminded that the two races are so closely tied in genes."

"Will you and dad have to get a divorce?" she asked, horrified. She couldn't imagine why anyone would want to separate two cultures as fond of one another as those of her parents. Her mother was a wizard news junkie, poring over the Daily Prophet every morning while her dad flipped through the muggle encyclopedia, muttering that he might as well have been raised in the middle ages. She had known from the time she was little that magic must remain secret from muggles, but she'd never quite understood the reason behind the rule. Why hide something so delightful?

"No, honey," her dad had assured her. "They can't make us do that, thank heaven. Now I won't lie to you – if things get any worse, we may have to leave the country for a few years while this all blows over. A few of our friends have relocated to France and sent their children to Beauxbatons Academy, which is also a very good school." He paused importantly. "But they will never, ever, ever break up this family, and that is a promise."

The family's mood had darkened significantly when Heidi and Hazel received letters summoning them to the ministry for "pre-admission assessment". Heidi's mother had carefully explained to Hazel's mother that Hazel must not let the ministry know she was a muggle-born, nor could she pretend to be a muggle after having received her Hogwarts letter.

"Check and mate," she had whispered.

"My baby!" Mrs. Cooley had sobbed, unaware that her daughter was watching from behind the bend in the staircase. "Isn't there anything I can do? Perhaps if we left the country?"

The lines in Mr. Lee's forehead had creased all the way to their zenith as he slowly stood up. "There is one way. But it will be a gamble. It all rests on Hazel..."

"What is it? What is the way?"

He hesitated. "I will claim her as my own daughter before the ministry."

Mrs. Cooley wiped her eyes. "Joseph! I couldn't ask you … it would bring so much danger on your own family..."

"I will not let this thing happen!" he roared. "Not when there is any chance of stopping it. Listen. I fathered the child. I divorced you before Hazel was born. It is a small lie. They will not investigate further if we sell the story."

"Joseph has a few contacts in the ministry," Mrs. Lee chimed in. "It's our only hope, Laura. And Hazel's a clever child; I bet she could do it."

Mrs. Cooley had smiled a wan, weak smile. "No one doubts that."

Excited as the friends were to be off to Hogwarts as they'd always dreamed, Heidi was concerned about Hazel's ability to keep the truth a secret all year. As they said goodbye to Heidi's parents, hoisted their trunks to the rolling position and crossed the invisible border onto the platform for the first time, Heidi couldn't help feeling as if she'd just entered a forbidden land, an 'I'm a half-blood!' sign dangling from her chest.

Julian, as usual, was no help. "I think the first-years are down that way," he murmured, waving vaguely down to the other end of the train before disappearing into a private compartment, presumably to administer a welcome-back snog to Natalie McDonald.

"C'mon, Hazel," she said briskly, following some other girls with unmarked robes, trying to find a group having a conversation she'd be willing to join.

"Did you see the news?" chirped one. "Professor Snape's been appointed headmaster. Those mudbloods won't stand a chance this year!"

(not that one)

"... and then Uric the Oddball issued his _seventeenth_ decree ..."

(or that one)

"I'm a little nervous."

(that one!)

But as she began to follow the boy who was a little nervous, Hazel announced, "I'm going up to the front of the train to gather some upperclassman gossip. If anyone asks I'm looking for Julian."

Heidi snorted. No chance of that girl ever keeping her head down anywhere, you-know-who or no you-know-who. At least her friend was as good at getting out of trouble as she was at getting into it. She parted ways with Hazel and cautiously entered her target's compartment. "Hi!" she said. "I'm Heidi. Are you first-years, too?"

"Yes," said the boy politely. "I'm Louis Boyle. You're welcome to sit with us if you like."

Heidi did, but she found it hard to get into the conversation. After all, they would most likely end up in different houses; what use was it making friends now?

"... and my sister gave me an amulet she reckons can ward off Death Eaters," said Rilla, the blue-eyed girl opposite Heidi.

"You can't say that word anymore," Louis warned her urgently. "It's banned back home. You have to say 'hereditary purist'. My uncle got into a terrible row with one of the Night Guards last week about it."

Adam, the short boy across from Louis, fingered the little green amulet experimentally. "Well, at least it'll ward off nerves," he said.

"What nerves?" said Rilla airily. "Only babies are scared on the first day of school. I bet before the week is out I'll be the seeker on my house team and top in every class!"

Adam shrugged. "I doubt they'll do much more this week than assign the introductory – and therefore boring – chapter of the textbook, give us a speech about how important their subject is, and demonstrate something exciting we won't be able to do until the end of term."

"Brilliant!" said Heidi. "Then we'll have lots of time to explore and meet people. This is going to be a lovely week."

"There aren't many of us this year," Louis remarked. "Do you think they'll give us a tour all at once, or in groups?"

Heidi laughed. "Not much chance of either; I've heard being perpetually lost the first couple years is something of a Hogwarts tradition. It'd be a big enough castle even if all the stairs and hallways and doors led to the same place each time!"

"We should make a map," suggested Adam. "We could put a charm on it to mimic the movements of the castle, maybe send out exploring parties to go all the possible ways, like with a corn maze. And then we'd record our findings like real explorers and cartographers."

"We could call ourselves the Labyrinth League!" Rilla said, excited.

"But what if we got lost forever?" worried Louis.

Heidi smiled. "It's a school, not the Catacombs. I'll be happy if I can find my way to my first class on time. We'll have to leave really early -"

"- at dawn -" suggested Rilla.

"- or camp out all night outside the door," laughed Louis, finally perking up a bit.

"We could roast marshmallows!"

"And have a pillow fight!"

"And all the older kids would think we were crazy -"

"- but if the teachers catch us we'll just say we're dedicated to being punctual," Adam grinned cheekily.

Well, there went Heidi's plan of not making friends yet. She hoped somewhere in their thorough exploration of the castle they found some place for kids of all different houses to hang out. A Common common room, they could call it, or maybe just a first-year common room. Heidi giggled at the idea of setting a password and keeping all the jealous second-years out.

A few hours later she caught up with Hazel again at the platform. "Did you find out anything interesting?" she asked.

"Did I ever!" Hazel grinned. "I can't believe you were making boring first-year conversation and missed it all."

Heidi frowned but motioned her to continue. She and Hazel didn't always agree on what was interesting.

"Well," said Hazel, "everyone's super-upset that Professor Snape is headmaster now, because a lot of people think he's a Death Eater, or was at any rate, except the children of a few Death Eaters are happy about it, and there was a huge fistfight between some Gryffindors and Slytherins, and then they started using magic, and a boy called Neville Longbottom told a boy called Draco Malfoy that as long as he was at Hogwarts, Dumbledore's Army would make sure no one touched a muggle-born or half-blood, and I think I'm in love, Hide!" she gasped, finally breathing in for air.

Heidi smiled. Hazel fell in love a _lot_. "What's Dumbledore's Army?" She knew Dumbledore was the old headmaster that died, but this was the first she'd heard of his military presence.

"It's a group of older kids who know really cool fighting spells. Harry Potter started it, but that's the other thing everyone's worried about. Harry Potter and his two best mates aren't on the train!"

Now she did know who Harry Potter was, of course. Her brother had told her about the air of mystery surrounding the boy-who-lived, how he seemed to face off against dark forces almost yearly, how he lost Gryffindor loads of points every year with his dangerous mischief but gained them back playing quidditch brilliantly. "Maybe you-know-who kidnapped them!" whispered Heidi.

"Some people were worried that he did, but the sister of one of the missing kids told everyone they're actually out looking for you-know-who!"

Heidi couldn't believe that three school children, even seventh-years, could be brave enough to track down a full-grown Dark wizard and fight him, on purpose. That was the kind of hero you read about but never actually met. Impressed as she was, though, she did wish with a little part of herself that Harry and his friends were still at Hogwarts to protect everyone. For ages everyone had looked to wise old Professor Dumbledore to keep the castle a safe haven, and his suspicious death and even more suspicious replacement with the maybe-Death Eater Slytherin head of house didn't bode so well for the coming year. Hopefully the rest of this Dumbledore's Army would be enough to fight off the Death Eaters if they ever attacked the castle.

"How on earth did you find all this out, Haze?" she asked presently, amazed as always by her friend's frightening ability to sneak through higher circles and return with a more accurate picture of reality than half the adults in the world.

"They didn't have much attention left for anything else once the fight broke out," she giggled. "Life is all about timing."

The girls had been walking as they had been talking, and soon enough a small fleet of boats came into view. An enormous man sporting a long black beard was waving his arms and calling to the first-years to find a boat. "Git in, yeh lot!" he bade them. "These are no times tah be lurkin' outdoors after sundown. Now could I have a word, Professor Sprout?" he asked of the small witch escorting them.

Lowering his voice and glancing around, he took her aside and held up a piece of parchment significantly. Whatever it was made the witch's eyes go wide as she read, her hands involuntarily clasping onto the large man's arm. He looked down, as if he'd been hoping his friend would have a solution and had just realized how ridiculous that hope was.

"It can' be true, Pomona, it just can'. Dementors an' basilisks an' dragons, sure, but Alecto an' Amycus Carrow both? Teachin' kids at Hogwarts, like they've a right to be here?" He closed his eyes for a moment. "Why if Dumbledore were here ..." But this thought was too painful for him to complete aloud.

Professor Sprout looked sadly up at her colleague. "I know, Hagrid, I can't believe it either, but we mustn't despair, not now. We're all that stands between these children and … and … oh, never mind, just get this lot up to the castle, Rubeus, before something really does jump out of those shadows."

And, sweeping his eyes over his young charges as if for the first time, taking in twenty breathless, beaming faces shining almost brightly enough to dispel the starless night, Professor Hagrid remarked, "Blimey, what a year tah be a firs' year."


	2. Snape vs Hat

The man with the long nose cleared his throat. "Good evening. I am Professor Snape, headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

He paused, appearing to Heidi completely enamored with the sound of that sentence. She couldn't sense immediately if he was actually evil or merely bureaucratic, so she decided she'd better listen carefully.

"It has long been the tradition at Hogwarts to allow a rather dirty old hat to sing you a trite little ballad before making an important snap decision about your future. However, this is not a musical conservatory, so allow me to summarize the information which the hat would be imparting to you this very second, were its brim not currently spello-taped together."

Professor Snape smiled a thin-lipped smile. "School children often segregate themselves into like-minded groups based on such criteria as shared interests, social classes, or collections of rare butterfly stickers, sometimes completely shunning any young person from an opposing faction. At Hogwarts we like to encourage and facilitate this process by performing the separation for you, effective immediately and permanently. You may find this unfair, but in the long run you will discover that within the walls of your House lies an environment where each of you can be despised and ridiculed for who he really is."

When the rather horrible caretaker liberated the Sorting Hat's speaking orifice and placed it on Jarvis Aaron's head, Heidi discovered that it could, indeed, speak. "Now just one minute, Snape, I spent all year composing my song and you will allow me to sing it or I won't sort a single hobbit – er, first-year."

The headmaster just laughed. "Magically binding contract, Mr. Hat; you're honor-bound as a school artifact to sort the students and you know it."

"Then I'll make them all Gryffindors, see if I don't!" the hat leered.

"Listen, you moldy, pointy, overgrown beanie, if you think I can't perform a simple 'legilimensus res' on my own hat and have you out to the dustbin before you can say 'fifteen hundred years of unbroken tradition', you've got another thing coming."

The hat harumphed. "_Slytherins. _Honestly."

"I don't care if you sort me into Sigma Phi Kappa house, will you please get on with it?" whined Jarvis Aaron, who tended to get very nervous when made to be the center of attention.

Everyone ignored him.

"Next year you can sing a whole ruddy medley, hat," Snape whispered wearily. "But this year I don't need you mucking up my delicate political balance. Now stop this at once!"

The hat made his version of a smile. "Still haven't forgiven me for sorting your little girlfriend into Gryffindor, have you? All right, all right, RAVENCLAW!"

The sorting proceeded as normal and Heidi tuned out the names she didn't know. The hall was rather pretty now that she took a look at it. ("Boyle, Louis ... HUFFLEPUFF!") Everything was so old, it looked like the banquet hall of a grand king. Not that Professor Snape was much like a king. He must be the unfaithful steward caring for the castle while the true monarch was away. ("Greengrass, Adam ... RAVENCLAW!") The students didn't fit into her musing at first, until she made them guests at a party … the young prince's birthday, perhaps, and they were trying on the sorting hat for a party game. And of course the teachers were courtiers. But she was stumped when she caught sight of the midnight-blue ceiling. Its magically realistic stars and clouds made her feel like she was camping in Yorkshire with Mum and Dad and Julian and -

"Lee, Hazel!"

The sorting hat took a full ninety seconds and appeared to be arguing vigorously with Hazel. Heidi had argued with Hazel many times in her life and she fully expected the hat to bend to the stubborn girl's will in the end, but perhaps not; it did have centuries of wisdom on her. Hazel even tried to take it off once, but some strong magic wouldn't let her. Finally, she fell silent and it appeared the hat had won. "SLYTHERIN!"

Oh, no! thought Heidi. Not Slytherin; that was where all the pure-blood supremacists lived! Hazel would be found out for sure. Why couldn't they have taken that pureblood customs course last summer when they'd had the chance? She hardly even noticed it was her turn. Someone must have pushed her forward, though, because she found herself involuntarily trying on the hat and sitting down."Put me in Slytherin," she thought urgently. "I have to protect my friend!"

But the hat wasn't famous for listening to children. "Protecting your friend, eh? Very loyal of you. HUFFLEPUFF!"

And that was that. ("Rilla Malkin, GRYFFINDOR!") She'd just have to trust to Hazel's good instincts, because there was no way she'd get down to that dungeon in one piece to help. As Professor Snape tried to convey to them that any child with the brains God gave a flobberworm could see that the forbidden forest was forbidden, Heidi stole a glance at the Slytherin table. Every student there looked suspiciously triumphant about something. She realized the Professors Carrow were being introduced.

But the Slytherins didn't look immediately threatening and she found it hard to worry in such surroundings. They were only children, after all. A nice feast had been set out for the Hufflepuffs, who all looked like very pleasant sorts, and even Louis looked content.

"Hello!" said a large ghost as she tucked into her potatoes. "I'm the Fat Friar, ghost of Hufflepuff! Welcome, young ones."

"Thank you," said Louis, looking torn between fear and awe. "Might I ask, how did you, er ..."

"Meet my end?" the Friar finished. "Well that's quite a story. I'll have to tell you later."

"He's sensitive about his death," whispered an older girl next to her.

Her friend groaned. "Hufflepuffs are sensitive about everything. Look at Hannah Abbot and and Susan Bones." He indicated two young women in earnest discussion at the head of the table. "Hannah left school because her mum died, but now she has to come back because it's compulsory, and Susan wants to give her the prefect badge back, but Hannah's terrified of her own shadow nowadays, even more than she used to be. They're arguing about what's _fair_ now." He sighed. "We need Susan; she can stand up to Snape. Fairness is overrated."

Heidi smiled sadly, passing along the carrots. "How'd you end up in this house then?"

Half the table turned and looked at her.

The older girl patted her on the back and whispered, "Summers wasn't kidding; you've really got to watch what you say around here!"

Heidi blushed. "Thank you for telling me."

The girl grinned. "That's all right. I'm Rose Zeller, by the way. And to answer your question, Hufflepuffs … have less in common than the other houses. I mean, we don't want any part of the Gryffindor / Slytherin death match, and we think the Ravenclaws are a little prissy, and we like promises and sharing and Martin Miggs comic books. But that's about it. Being the house of common sense isn't much to cheer about."

"Austin Brown," her other neighbor introduced himself. "Rose is exaggerating. I've got a sibling in every house and I think we've got it pretty good. We play as hard as we work, and on Thursdays we sing."

"You sing?" laughed Heidi.

Rose nodded. "It's too bad Hogwarts never puts on school musicals. We'd see who the house of rejects was then!"

"Our head of house is terrific, too," added Austin. "Kevin swears he saw her drop a mandrake on Amycus Carrow last year when the Death Eaters invaded… whom I guess we have to call Professor Carrow now. Blimey, that's not going to be fun."

Louis shuddered. "You can't say 'Death Eater' now. You have to call them -"

"I know, I know, 'hereditary purist'," Summers droned, joining the conversation. "Well I won't. Not if I get a hundred detentions."

"Two hours a week," moaned Austin, making faces at the high table where the Carrows reclined in thralling silence. "And two with the other Death Eater. This is so wrong!"

"At least we never have to take another class with Snape," Rose reminded him.

"Don't say 'Snape' just now," begged Summers. "I think I might be sick just looking at him."

After dinner everyone looked expectantly up at the headmaster, but he simply waved a hand at them and muttered, "I'm supposed to tell you to go to bed now, as if you're in nursery school or something. Not that it's going to do any good, of course, as your turgid little back-to-school parties tend to drag on into the wee hours of the morning, but I'll humor Professor McGonagall this once. Nighty night, my dear inmates, and may you dream of all the lovely drudging days ahead of you in the coming school year."


	3. The Early Bird Gets the Flobberworm

"I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want / So tell me what you want, what you really really want / I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want ..."

"What is it? What do you want?" exclaimed Kimmy in a half-awake voice as Susan took a throw pillow to Heidi's radio alarm clock, to little effect.

Ah, the joys of random room assignments.

"Heidi!" shouted Susan urgently, now jumping angrily on her new roommate's bed. "Heidi it's five-thirty A.M.! Turn that stupid muggle music off!"

She might as well have been talking to a broomstick. A violently snoring broomstick, at that. Susan was an only child and unaccustomed to both the shocking personal habits of others and the maddening sensation of not getting one's own way after a reasonable period of time. So it was not surprising that she took this matter so personally; it was a watershed moment in her social development.

Though it was hard to see how she thought shouting "Die, evil noise box, die!" would help.

Snape's prediction about the back-to-school midnight rave in the common room had come all too true for Hufflepuff House. After Professor Sprout finished reading the first-years a bedtime story (a lovely tradition that Heidi enjoyed immensely, heedless of Susan's protests that they were too old for such things), the kind old head of house had gone to bed herself and the older kids had come out to play. In consequence, no one in their charming little badger hole had gotten much sleep the previous night, and while the N.E.W.T. students had all cleverly written early classes out of their schedules, our protagonist and her friends needed their rest.

Kimmy sat up slowly, still about one-quarter asleep. "I missed it. She said what she really really wanted. What was it; did you catch it?"

It took Susan a moment to determine that she meant the song. "Who cares?" she called in mid-bounce. "We need to get Heidi conscious so she can stop that racket! Can you get some cold water?"

But Kimmy was now dancing, both gleefully and involuntarily. As a pureblood, she had never had opportunity to hear any pop music before now, and she couldn't think of a better way to start her secondary school career.

"Can't be battery-powered … that doesn't work here," muttered Susan to herself. "Must be some kind of magic hybrid. Probably illegal too – Kimmy, stop dancing and find me something wakeup-y!"

"Yeah, you're right; we have to wake her up so she can show me how to dance to this stuff!" Kimmy grinned. "Asomulus!"

Growing up pureblooded certainly had its advantages. Heidi awoke instantly and flipped a small, unobtrusive switch on the back of the clock as Susan gave Kimmy a 'why didn't you do that half an hour ago?' look.

"Sorry about the noise," Heidi yawned. "But at least it looks like you were already up. Make hay while the sun shines, eh?"

For the first of many times to come in the next seven years, Susan looked ready to strangle something. Heidi gulped. Kimmy pulled her defenseless white cat to herself nervously.

"YOU," Susan growled.

"What?" asked Heidi.

"YOU HAVE DISTURBED ME BEFORE SUNUP."

"I'm sorry!"

"YOU SHOULD BE."

"I am!"

"IN THE FUTURE, YOU WILL FIND A MORE DISCREET METHOD OF WAKING YOURSELF UP."

Heidi nodded.

Kimmy let out a sigh of relief; the danger was past. "Heidi, what's a zig-uh-zig-eye?"

In a timid whisper, Heidi explained about the Spice Girls, then headed for the boys' dormitory. Luckily, Louis was awake and dressed, while his roommate was still asleep; it would've been an awkward time for an introduction. "We've got Transfiguration with the Ravenclaws first thing," he told her, examining his new timetable. "Let's go find Adam."

"We can bring him to breakfast," Heidi agreed, heading up to the common room.

"But what if we get lost?" he worried. Rose had given them a map the previous night which sprouted little footprints everywhere they'd already been, but it didn't do much to show them where they were going.

Heidi wasn't listening. "Mr. Friar," she asked politely, "would you like to come to Ravenclaw with us?"

The Fat Friar looked up in surprise and pleasure. It was rather dull, haunting the same building for hundreds of years at a time. Unable to sleep as a human does, he had just spent the past four hours brooding over his horribly embarrassing death yet again. If you've ever wondered why ghosts tend to cause trouble at night, well, it's not for dramatic effect. It's because they're bored stiff and hooked on the spiteful notion that if they aren't sleeping, no one else should be either.

The Friar was gentler than most, though, and delighted to find diversion mentoring young people for a few hours. "Yes, let's!" he beamed.

But finding the Ravenclaw common room would prove twice as easy as gaining entry into it. Upon the Friar's advice, Kimmy knocked on the eagle knocker, at which point it promptly asked, "From whom or whence does the wand borrow light when one performs the 'lumos' spell?"

Louis shrugged. "From Donald?"

Heidi poked him playfully. "What?" he protested. "Whenever my dad wants to smoke a cigar, he bums a light from my Uncle Donald. I keep telling him to get his own lighter, but he's afraid Mum would find it and he'd be caught."

"Oooh, I bet this is a trick question," said Kimmy, ignoring him. "Does it borrow the light from the sun?"

"No," said the eagle unceremoniously.

"I know! It borrows it from nowhere," guessed Heidi.

The Fat Friar sighed. "The wand borrows illumination from deep within the heart of he whose heart is light." He turned to the others. "She's been using the same riddles for centuries."

"Correct," the eagle answered, slightly miffed. "And you try thinking up clever new things to ask people all day for fourteen hundred years with only a patchy old Enlightenment Enchantment for help and see if your brain doesn't run a little dry."

The children quickly located Adam and roused him in a most undignified manner. "It's magic time!" squeaked Heidi. "Let's get to breakfast."

Adam glanced at the clock and then at an informational sheet on his bedside table. "Breakfast doesn't even start for another hour," he muttered.

"Then we have time to wake everyone up," Heidi pointed out reasonably. "We'll go get Rilla, and then Hazel, and then by that time it'll be almost light out."

"Hurray, a wake-up-the-first-years parade!" Kimmy announced.

It was at this point in our narrative that our heroes and their bemused onlookers fell subject to a very curious effect of children and sociology. For you see, when a normal young human person spots five or more young human people, and the first young human person is not busy doing anything in particular at the moment, and the five or more young human people are giggling excitedly and heading at a leisurely pace toward an unknown destination, there comes over the observing person an overwhelming urge to follow the merry group. Like a snowball falling downhill, more people will keep joining until finally the small army arrives at the end of its odyssey with so many followers that there is not enough room for them all inside. (Invariably the mysterious El Dorado of their seeking turns out to have been somewhere extremely mundane and not at all worth the pomp and circumstance put into it, like 'the laundry room' or 'Tesco's' or 'Scotland', but this does not detract from the quest's value in the slightest.)

The effect is intensified tenfold one's first few days in a new environment. One would think that after a little trial and error, most young human people would know better, but in fact this nursery-school-esque behavior claims students in every transitional period up to and including the first week of law school, or even later in the case of especially insecure individuals – fresh recruits to retirement centers have been known to unwittingly follow new friends to the gerontologist's office. "Previous plans be damned," they find themselves thinking. "I, too, wish to be laughing and moving towards a goal."

Thus as they headed up to Gryffindor, our fearless leader's giddy group had grown considerably. Unfortunately, the Gryffindor common room had a proper password, but through sheer inertia the children managed to push past a surprised early riser coming out and into the tower. "Rilla!" Heidi shrieked, heading up a spiral staircase at random. When she was almost to the top, though, the staircase suddenly turned into a large slide and dumped a dozen delighted kids onto the carpet in a laughing tangle. Shortly after the Grey Lady finished explaining that young gentlemen were not permitted in the dormitories of young ladies at Hogwarts, under pain of slide burns, Rilla and her roommates slid down to join them, fully dressed. It is nearly impossible to get more than six hours of real sleep before one's first day of secondary school.

I hear you in the back protesting that you have never once allowed nerves to obstruct your sleeping habits since earliest babyhood, and I also hear you pointing out that Susan went back to bed many paragraphs ago, freed from the twin irritants that were her high-strung roommates at last. To this I respond that the Susan Deerfields of the world rarely have as much fun in their lives as Heidi and her friends had in the hour before dawn that day.

"Good morning," Rilla smiled. "Guess what? There are three open positions on the Gryffindor quidditch team!"

Louis grinned at her. "I love quidditch. Well, watching it, not playing it. You should definitely try out; did you know the last Gryffindor seeker made the team his first year?"

Rilla gave him a 'duh, who doesn't know that story?' look and everyone marched down to Slytherin upon Heidi's insistence.

"Hazel sleeps like the dead. It's going to take all of us."

The walk down to the dungeons was like a miniature children's crusade; the students were hardly bothering to keep quiet anymore. Heidi couldn't see how they were supposed to get in, as there didn't seem to be any doorknob on the solid brick wall, but suddenly the Grey Lady disappeared, reappeared, and discreetly whispered the password, muttering that she had ways of weaseling things out of the Bloody Baron. The door materialized and they all stepped through.

"It's a bit grim down here, isn't it?" Rilla whispered. Now that they'd arrived, the children instinctively knew it wasn't wise to linger. Quickly locating the first-year girls' dormitory, the seven or eight hands nearest Hazel's bed efficiently tickled her until she awoke. A crack of laughter roused the other occupants of the room, and in a few minutes the troupe of nomads had grown even larger.

"Thanks for coming," Hazel said sincerely, and Heidi heard what she wasn't saying, too. Thanks for having the courage to come down here. Thanks for not leaving us out simply because of the twelve hours separating us from the self-righteous attitudes of three-quarters of the school. And thanks for acting like it was nothing. Maybe one day it will be.

Their fear dissolved, the group chattered excitedly about their expectations for the coming year. Heads full of exploding dreams, they all trotted to the Great Hall: seventeen first-and-second-years, five ghosts, two curious prefects and a toad.

They walked straight into Professor Snape.

"And what," he hissed, "are all of you doing out of bed so long after curfew?"

Louis cowered. Adam shut his eyes. But Rilla marched right up to the headmaster and announced, "Please sir, my head of house told us curfew started at nine but she never said when it ended."

If anyone could appreciate the twisting of logic to one's own purpose, it was Snape. But he wasn't about to admit it."You didn't answer my question," he snapped. "My concern is not so much for your vacant beds as for the possibly irreparable mischief you plan to cause while not occupying them during the customary hours."

"I just wanted to wake up a few of my friends for breakfast," Heidi admitted.

Snape responded, "Ah, yes, an intimate gathering indeed. What do you take me for, child? A hag in a blood bank wouldn't be this excited about breakfast." He frowned his patented 'why are you still breathing the same air as me?' frown. "Out with it! Where are you all going that couldn't wait for..." he consulted his watch. "Fifty-two minutes?"

No one spoke for a moment, and then suddenly Kimmy squeaked, "Professor sir, my roommate taught me a muggle expression that says, 'make hay while the sun shrines'. I don't know if I understood it right, but I _think_ the point was, when you get someplace as nice a sun shrine, you want to start making hay just as soon as you possibly can!"

Snape's eyes suddenly took in the full splendor of the scene. In the past twenty-four hours he'd gotten even less sleep than his students. Between talking his new Muggle Studies professor out of keeping a live muggle as a class pet, extracting a promise from the Dark Arts professor to keep to the Geneva Convention during his practical demonstrations on the students, grovelling egregiously to You-Know-Who-Annoys-the-Snot-Out-Of Me, fielding four dozen owls from various angry parents concerning his appointment, convincing half the staff not to resign in protest, and taking a serious browbeating from the portrait of the man he'd very reluctantly murdered the past spring, he'd been starting to wonder if it was all worth it. But suddenly, surrounded by a score of horribly innocent students beaming up anxiously at him, Professor Snape, the man they trusted to keep them safe and whole through the coming tribulation, he realized why he'd become an educator in the first place.

"Well," he growled.

Twenty grave throats gulped.

"The early bird gets the flobberworm. Have a great start-of-term." And with that he disappeared.

In the years to come, the rousing of the first-years would become a sacred tradition at Hogwarts. And though its form changed in several important ways over the decades, it was always led by a Hufflepuff and always concluded with the headmaster's blessing.


	4. Oh, Look, It's Time to Go to Class

Terry Boot was not in the best mood to start with when he got down to breakfast, and finding a couple dozen munchkins taking up the seventh-year end of the Ravenclaw table did nothing for his hangover. At first he was confused. Was he at the wrong side then? Did the world go wonky while they'd been sleeping? Had his old beloved school, his home for the past seven years, transformed so completely from this awful war that the very epicenter of the castle had folded in upon itself and come back wrong-way out?

No, he concluded, they were just being daft. "You lot get to your own tables," he slurred. "Or I'll have my good friend the Head Girl give you detention."

Padma Patil tugged on his sleeve. "There's technically no rule confining students to House tables; it's just a long-standing tradition." Padma had read 'Hogwarts: A History' cover to cover in preparation for her new role, although something told her this year's scholastic legal system would have little in common with that of the past.

"What is the point of being Head Girl," Michael Corner wondered aloud, "if you can't use it to your advantage once in awhile?" He turned to the first-years and pulled the maddest face curren tly allowed by Hogwarts bylaws. "Shoo!"

"Come on," Padma admonished them, "let's just go sit with Parvati and Lavender. I need a word with the Gryffindors anyway."

There was plenty of room; half the Gryffindors in their year seemed to be gone. "Saw the row on the train," Michael said approvingly, sitting down beside Seamus. "We're back for action this year then?"

Parvati shot Lavendar a 'who's driving this bus?' look, who passed it on to Seamus, who bounced it Neville's way with a 'you started this mess' spin tacked on.

"No choice," Neville said firmly. "The man needs an army now more than ever."

Meanwhile, a seriously cool sixth-year was walking Adam, Kimmy, Louis and Heidi to class.

"Do you think Professor Hagrid could give me some Yugglenaut eggs to bring home to my father?" Heidi asked eagerly.

Luna smiled serenely. "I don't think Hagrid knows about Yugglenauts. In fact he doesn't know about half of the creatures living on his grounds."

"Well he's the gamekeeper, isn't he?" Louis asked. "Who cares for all the wrackspurts and nargles and things if he doesn't know about them?"

"Oh," she sighed, "they're very hardy. They don't need to bother humans too much. Anyway this is Professor McGonagall's classroom – I'll see you all later!"

The children filed into Transfiguration and sat down. Shortly they were joined by Susan.

"Nice to see you in daylight," she remarked shortly to her roommates before settling in next to Adam, whom she judged on sight to be the classmate least likely to distract her. Heidi made the universal 'what crawled up her gnomehole and sighed?' face at Kimmy, who made the 'I don't know but let's hope she finds some Gnome-No soon!' face back.

Susan then began to arrange her side of the table in a most fastidious fashion: textbook open to page one on the left, quill dipped and ready on the right, and between them a crisp new notebook divided into the sections 'technique', 'theory', 'history', and (we're not making this up) 'edifying trivia'.

"Nice to meet you, Edifying Trivia," Adam laughed, extending his hand. "Madam, I'm Adam."

She did not take his. "Palindromes are for children," she informed him.

"Well then, Miss Trivia, allow me to present, er, myself, Mr. Adam Greengrass of Greengrass Manor, Oxford. With my compliments," he winked.

She sighed. "I am Susan Deerfield, and I am completely unflirtable."

"Good to know," he said demurely, right before Professor McGonagall rapped the class to order.

McGonagall didn't mess about. Assuring them that they were responsible for all classroom policies outlined in the syllabus, as well as the first chapter of the text, she was waxing poetic within five minutes about her favorite subject. Transfiguration, she stressed, was mostly mental; the words were merely triggers to their collective unconscious to unleash the power they all held deep inside. It was most important to THINK: think about where their raw materials had come from, think about where their end results would have come from, had they been made naturally, and imagine the path that could have taken them there. She then (to several students' intense relief) stopped talking and set them to turning a matchstick into a needle.

Heidi obediently began trying to follow the instructions outlined in her rather messy notes, although it was difficult to think of rolling forests and deep iron mines with Kimmy tapping her match like a drumstick on the side of her textbook, assuring Professor McGonagall she was 'preparing mentally'. Louis was surreptitiously trying to carve his match needle-shaped under the desk, on the theory that it would give him less to do on the magic end.

"That's not how it works, I'm afraid," Adam whispered to him. "You have to get the density as well. Volume's easy to change but it's the mass of the object that'll get you … actually that gives me an idea." He flicked his wand forcefully to great result.

"Mr. Greengrass," said McGonagall, drawing out the name to an entire sentence's worth. "Does that look like the needle in your textbook?"

The students all looked up from their work, glad they weren't Mr. Greengrass.

"The illustrations in the book are just suggestions," Adam hedged. "This is a perfectly good sewing needle – would you like me to embroider you something and prove it?"

(The spectators drew in their breaths. Who _was_ this kid?)

"Nevertheless, sewing needles are not traditionally made of gold," she admonished him. "Now look at Miss Deerfield here: she has followed the twelve-point method exactly, and she has a perfect standard-issue_ steel_ needle of exactly the right size."

Susan beamed unconscionably at this. 'Teachers who don't tolerate nonsense' were right up there with 'babies who sleep most of the time' on her list of favorite people – whereas 'snarky boys who try to cheat their way through school' lay in the bottom three.

"But has she really learned anything from the operation?" Adam mused. "I've just discovered I can bypass the 'shore up atomic numbers' step completely if I simply choose a more closely matched element. However, as you wish ..." he waved his wand again. "There. Grey."

McGonagall picked up his needle suspiciously. "Now how long do you think I've been teaching this subject?" she rasped. "You've simply put a charm on it to make it look like a different color. It's only an illusion."

"How do you know transfiguration isn't just a stronger illusion than a charm?" he countered. "One, maybe, with a level of believability closer to that of reality itself?"

('Oh, snap!' thought Heidi.)

Now the professor was interested. "The strength of a spell is often underrated," she told him. "But magnitude is the only real difference between an 'avada kedavra' and a localized 'impedimenta'. Now as you're so clever, maybe you can turn it back into a matchstick."

Adam looked slightly punctured. "It's much harder turning a dead element more alive than living tissue more dead."

"Perhaps," McGonagall suggested, "life is a weak enough illusion for you to fake."

"That was brilliant!" Louis told him after class. "Can you do that with all the subjects?"

Adam shrugged. "I like to get as much as I can out of my education. It was nice of the professor to play along; some of my old teachers were less receptive."

Susan made a sulking noise but everyone ignored her.

"Doesn't skimp on the homework though, does she?" Louis observed.

"How can you be complaining?" Heidi squeaked. "We get to do magic! We get to turn things into other things _using our brains_! I'll practice as much as I can, thank you."

"Study club!" Kimmy chimed in. "We can read the chapters aloud to one another. Except Adam can't come because he'd hog all the brainwaves."

Adam frowned, and so did Susan.

"Never mind," said Louis, patting Susan on the shoulder. "Next lesson is flying. You can't be outsmarted there; it's just instinct." But somehow this did not make Susan feel any better.

"I've never flown," she admitted once Adam had shuffled off in the opposite direction. "I'm a little afraid of it."

"Don't worry," Kimmy told her. "I'm sure we'll start out nice and easy."

"First one to knock all the others off their brooms wins!" announced Professor Jameson, immediately following the 'when you say UP your broom _goes_ up' speech.

"Awwwright!" whooped Rilla, obviously familiar with this game. The Gryffindors gave each other 'Yay reckless house!' grins. The Hufflepuffs, meanwhile, huddled in the corner, trying not to panic before their five minutes of strategizing were up.

"Excuse me," Kimmy asked frankly, "but wasn't the flying instructor a nice old lady?"

Professor Jameson smirked. "Madame Hooch was discovered to be of, er, questionable ancestry. So until the headmaster can find a 'qualified' instructor for this course, perhaps with 'teaching experience', we're going to do things the old fashioned way. Sink or swim! Fight or flee!"

"Fly or crash?" gulped Louis.

"Exactly!"

Louis pulled Kimmy aside. "I've been flying a few times before. Have you?"

Kimmy smiled nervously. "Under kinder circumstances."

"Well then," he posited, "if we all hold onto each other and stay low to the ground, no one should get hurt too badly."

"So says the law of intertia," Susan agreed. "But the law of momentum says once we fall, we're going to fall _hard_!"

(The entire Gryffindor alliance was already playing 'crack the whip' in mid-air.)

"This is awful," said Louis' roommate, a shy kid called Everett who had also never flown before. "Maybe we should just forfeit?"

"I don't think Professor Jameson will let us," Louis sighed, as if he'd considered this possibility already.

(The Gryffindors had gotten bored and moved on to three-dimensional Red Rover.)

"Oh, come on, let's just get up there before he levitates us all!" cried Heidi, and shot off the ground. This proved to be a mistake as, quite unfettered by her attempts to guide its movements, Heidi's broom began dancing a merry little jig sixty feet in the air.

The Hufflepuffs gasped as only Hufflepuffs can. Everyone stared for as long as socially acceptable, then"Find a blanket!" demanded Susan. "We'll have to try to catch her-"

But she broke off as Rilla started for Heidi's patch of sky with a determined expression. This was it. She was going to make a name for herself! Rilla the Rescuer, perhaps. Or perhaps something a little more mysterious … but she could work out those details later. Never fear, ye of inadequate aeronautical skills, I will guide you safely to terra firma!

Unfortunately, Rilla was still a ways off when a classmate of hers grabbed the end of her broomstick and yanked. "What are you doing? She's like a free point for our team!"

Rilla shot him the intergalactic 'you disgust me' expression. "We were never assigned teams," she pointed out quite reasonably before crushing his hand with her boot and rushing off to contain her flighty friend.

('I am _so _getting a theme song,' she couldn't help but think.)

Meanwhile Heidi struggled to hold out a hand in Rilla's direction. "You have to stay calm!" Rilla shouted. "Show the broom you're its master!" But reality seemed to be contradicting that claim. So Heidi imagined the broom was a hippogriff, just a frightened animal like Star and Pet back home. "Whoa, now!" she told Star. "It's okay. I didn't mean it." And as her shouts softened to encouraging whispers, her body stabilized and the broom did, too.

At long last, Rilla got a hand on Heidi's broom and firmly ordered it to stop this nonsense. It did. She guided it down and Heidi gratefully stepped off. Rilla looked at her classmates, as if to say, 'show some bloody chivalry', and began teaching the half-bloods to hover. By the end of the hour, Everett, Susan and Heidi were skimming along contentedly.

"I hope our next class is as exciting as the first two," said Kimmy, as if her friend hadn't just nearly broken her neck.

"Oh, don't say that," Everett shivered. "It's Dark Arts next."


	5. Mostly About the SeventhYears

Heidi knew precious little about Hogwarts but she did know this:

There used to be a class called "Defense Against the Dark Arts".

This class had just been replaced with a class called "Dark Arts".

The students of Hogwarts were about to become what they most feared.

The classroom was as bare as their new professor's mind, no pedagogical decoration in sight. It contained nearly two Slytherins for every Hufflepuff. Emboldened by their morning bonding experience, some had crossed the invisible line down the center to sit with new friends, but the remainder did not look promising.

Hazel took a seat next to Heidi in the back row. "Hi," she said. "Did you know there's a charm that can make things fly?"

Heidi groaned. "Flying is overrated."

At this moment Professor Carrow the Amycus entered and a hush fell over the classroom. "Good morning, boys and girls," he greeted his class, in a voice that reminded Heidi of the kind of muggle educational television programme with talking animals in it.

"Good morning," they responded, a little timidly.

Professor Carrow beamed maliciously. "I'm going to teach you about some powerful spells that you can use against enemies. You better hope you don't get into a duel with a grown-up until you're a little older though! You'd get exploded for sure. But don't worry. You can practice in the meantime on each other and on animals that can't do magic, like cats or muggles."

Heidi tried not to scream as her professor pulled out a cage full of rabbits.

"Today we're gonna try an easy one. It's called the Decapitation Hex."

Kimmy frantically raised her hand. When called on, she squeaked, "Please, sir, isn't that spell for much older children?"

Carrow appeared confused. "How am I supposed to remember what to teach all these different classes? I asked the older ones what they usually learn and they listed lots of useless tripe like Shield Charms. Stuff that you'll never need if you can land a good hex yourself." He drew himself up importantly. "This year, missie, we're all gonna learn some useful spells that I myself as your great professor have made use of in my career."

Hannah Abbott was so absorbed in grooming her mandrake seedling that a sudden noise sent her bumping into the table. She looked up. Neville Longbottom, duckling-printed earmuffs curled about his strong neck, loomed over her seat.

"I didn't mean to startle you, Hannah," he said kindly. "I was wondering if we could talk."

She got to her feet, flustered. "Yes, I suppose. Do you need prefect help?"

Neville and Parvati, the purebloods, had been handed the seventh-year Gryffindor badges almost as an afterthought. Normally Neville would've been terrified he'd botch the job, but patrolling a few corridors was nowhere near the top of his 'things to stress over' list this year. "No," he told her. "I'm getting the hang of being a prefect. I wanted to talk to you about the D.A."

"The D.A.?" she repeated, very quietly. "Surely we're not going to do that this year – think of what would happen if Snape found out!"

"That's why we have to," whispered Neville, cognizant of the bitter irony of hearing his younger self's worst fear repeated back to him. "We're practically under siege here, a bunch of schoolkids shut up in Snape's stronghold. Who knows how long the war will last? Anything could go wrong; I don't trust those Carrows farther than I could throw them. We need to be able to defend ourselves, and the little kids."

"I'm in," interrupted Susan Bones. "I'll talk to the Hufflepuffs for you, Nev." Turning to her friend, she added, "Your mum would've wanted you to live through this."

Neville smiled; you could always count on the Hufflepuffs. Hannah had a point, too, though – they would have to be so careful! And who would watch over the young ones if all the older students got thrown in the brig at once? It only took one Marietta Edgecombe. It was so horrid and strange to think of running such a dangerous mission without Hermione's comprehensive cleverness, Harry's humble but unquestioned leadership, even Ron's macho optimism. The mantle always somehow fell to the Gryffindors, fair or not, and now everyone just expected him to inherit control because he'd happened to be present for an adventure or two.

In a sense Neville had been the heir of other people's greatness his whole life. But it was going to take a team effort to manage the D.A. with a parliament of understudies.

After he left, Hannah looked at Susan, peeved. "Well now he thinks I'm a coward. Thanks a lot."

Susan shrugged. "You want him to admire you? Make him."

Forty-five Hufflepuff heads looked up at the sound of the Peace Bell, another one of Sprout's charming inventions. "Come on," said Rose to the first-years. "That means form a circle and listen."

"Yay kindergarten," sulked little Susan.

"This is serious," big Susan told her. "Life or death. Now hold the Trust Trinket for me."

Ernie MacMillan, a seventh-year prefect, faced the circle. The girls had agreed he was the best public speaker available and the most authoritative Hufflepuff short of Sprout. Whom they didn't see fit to bother with their little venture.

"It should come as no surprise to you all that we live in dangerous times," he began. "I look around me and nearly a third of the faces I should see are gone. I don't even like to think where. You-know-who has been at large for over two years and the Ministry of Magic's recent, er, tactics, mean if we want to graduate into a world without fear we're going to have to fight for it."

His eyes traced the circle slowly, lighting especially on the older students. "Two years ago, when we first found ourselves at odds with the faculty at Hogwarts, the students took it upon themselves to form a very special organization called Dumbledore's Army. At the time we merely practiced defence; this year we may need to resort to more drastic measures. Those of us who are overage, or will probably be by the time this is over, might very well find ourselves on a battlefield in the near future. Or it might simply become necessary to eliminate the resident Death – er, the Hereditary – dash it all, I mean Death Eaters. There are hundreds of us and only three of them, after all!"

"Don't get ahead of yourself," Susan the elder reminded him.

He blinked as if coming out of a rhetorical trance. "Right. Well we haven't decided yet what we'll need to do; right now I'm just asking you to think about joining up. I'll give you some time, but the Gryffindors will want a number soon."

"They will, will they?" sneered Austin Brown. "So if the big mighty Gryffindors decide to make some heroic last stand and get us all killed, we're just going to do it?"

"Better than being murdered in our beds next summer," Ernie responded.

The response to this was instantaneous cacophony. Older kids shouted, younger kids whimpered, and everyone tried to wish Ernie's words away.

"We ought to be in charge!" Jamie Summers declared. "In a muggle war it's the clear heads that make the battle plans. The hotheads are cannon fodder!"

Susan held up her hands. "Stop it! This isn't about houses!"

"Right, and they just happen to be giving the orders all the time," Austin shouted, his face red and intimidating. "All their best people are out for the count and they _still _think they ought to be in charge. All they've got left is sodding Neville Longbottom!"

"You leave Neville out of this!" Hannah cried, so loudly that everyone looked.

"Why should I?" challenged Austin. "We're meant to be following him aren't we? He doesn't know one end of a wand from the other! I could handle Harry Potter, he was ace, but Neville's hardly the best man for the job."

"Yeah, we're the house of Cedric Diggory!" added Summers.

"You lot can stuff your middle child syndrome," Hannah said. "Neville's organizing because it was his idea, and because he's fair and careful and listens to everybody. If you want to help teach I'm sure he'd love some volunteers."

Austin grumbled, "I think we ought to ask him a few questions about his plans before we help him do something daft."  
Hannah replied, "We're not signing an enlistment form. We're preparing ourselves for the worst, because that's what Hufflepuffs do. And if it comes to a fight well, no one's going to decide for you." She paused. "But I know a real Hufflepuff would stand by his schoolmates if they were in danger."

No one had a response to that.

Neville flushed with energy when they described the scene. "Brilliant then, that's everybody; Padma said the Ravenclaws were in as well. We'll meet up on Saturday and start lessons."

"Er, aren't you forgetting some people?" Hannah asked timidly.

No one knew who she met at first. But then … "Oh, no," groaned Susan. "You can't be serious! They'd report us to you-know-who straight away!"

"How do you know that?"

"Malfoy as good as said it on the train," Neville told them. "He isn't even bothering to hide his Dark Mark anymore. And he's head boy!"

"But if we don't try to get the good Slytherins on our side they'll be nothing stopping them from joining Him," Hannah pointed out. "Obviously I'm not going to ask Malfoy … but Millie Bulstrode isn't evil. She'd know who to spread the word to."

"Be that as it may," Ernie interjected, "it only takes one of them to get the word to Malfoy."

"We're risking that anyway," she said. "Austin Brown could tell his brother, or Rose Zeller could tell her boyfriend, or anything. The fact is we have to deal with people as people, not house members." She gulped. "Or we'll have to fight a whole house instead of a handful of Death Eaters' children."

"All right, all right," Neville conceded. "But don't discuss it with any Slytherin you don't know personally."

Hannah nodded. She wasn't even that keen to talk to the Slytherins she did know.


End file.
